The year I lost Mormonism

Or maybe Mormonism lost me.

In 2005 I was living in Texas and working at a job I absolutely hated. But other than my job, life was good. My wife and I were reasonably content and happy, and our children were giving us the normal mix of pride and grief that children do.

At church I was in the high priests group leadership, and I was dedicated to my calling and to the church. At that point in my life (I had just turned 40), I probably had a less literal approach to Mormon history and scripture than most owing to my participation on various pro-LDS message boards over the years (from alt.religion.mormon to the MAD board), but I had a testimony, and I knew the church was God’s kingdom on earth.

A lot of little things nagged at me over the years, but I always subordinated them to my testimony. I was convinced that God had spoken to me, and nothing else mattered.

But on August 8, I was getting ready to go home from work when a good friend called from the Church Office Building in Salt Lake, where he worked and still does work. He sounded distressed.

He had just learned that Joseph Smith had pressured Newel K. Whitney and Heber C. Kimball to give him their teenaged daughters as wives in exchange for the family’s exaltation.

“That can’t be true, can it?” he asked, and I could hear the anguish in his voice.

“Yes, that’s true,” I said. I wished I could have told him it wasn’t, but it was true.

Then he said he had learned that Joseph Smith had sent men away on missions and then taken their wives for his own once the husbands were out of town.

“That isn’t true, is it?” he asked again, this time sounding more desperate.

“Yes, that’s true, too,” I said.

His voice became very serious. “The church is still true, isn’t it, John?”

I thought for a moment. Suddenly I realized that I had been giving Joseph Smith a pass for reprehensible behavior that I wouldn’t excuse in anyone else. I had accepted that, although it wasn’t literally a true history, the Book of Mormon was nevertheless inspired scripture.

Now I was faced with scripture that wasn’t actually true coming from a man who acted just like you would expect a false prophet to act.

“John, it’s still true, isn’t it? You believe it’s true, don’t you?” he asked again.

“That’s something you’ll have to work out on your own,” I said. “I can’t tell you what you should believe.”

In that moment all the excuses I had made for Joseph Smith evaporated. Suddenly I didn’t have to dismiss obvious problems with the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. The rewriting of modern revelation was no longer a mystery. Bank fraud and adultery and cut-rate swindling suddenly came into focus.

I went home that day and said to my wife, “I do not believe in the church anymore.”

She encouraged me to take President Hinckley’s challenge and prayerfully reread the Book of Mormon by year’s end. To make a long story short, rereading it just opened up more problems, which prayer could not resolve. I ended up sitting in a coffee shop in late December, reading Moroni while sipping a rather nice triple espresso.

Life hasn’t always been easy since that day, as many of you know, but I can honestly say that I am more at peace with myself and with the world since I figured out Mormonism

Oh, and my friend still works at the COB. But he doesn’t believe, either. Of course, he never did.

In case of emergency

I’ve been in Utah for about 8 months, and almost every day I see something that makes me do a double-take. At lunch I went grocery shopping with my daughter, and I headed to the restroom, where I saw a large blue plaque with bold white letters on the door: “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.” What kind of emergency could happen in a supermarket restroom? I wondered. (I can imagine several horrible scenarios.) The rest of the plaque read, “You can obtain a diaper from the customer service desk.” I suppose I should be pleased that they had this sign on the men’s room door, but it still made me laugh. Back when we were having children, the men’s restrooms had no facilities for changing diapers, and more than once I spread out paper towels on the floor so I could change a poopy diaper. So, in that respect, the sign at Maceys represents progress.

Moving from Texas to Utah, after the mountains I noticed the demographic differences: far fewer minorities, and a lot more babies. College Station, which is home to Texas A&M, would seem fairly analogous to Provo: conservative, mostly white students, and a penchant for ostentatious patriotism. But there weren’t many babies. Here you see girls that look no more than 15 pushing strollers on campus. But the right-wing pseudopatriotism is well-represented. Today I saw a car with a BYU parking sticker, a baby seat, and a bumper sticker demanding repeal of NAFTA (courtesy of jbs.org).

Inside Maceys is a survivalist’s dream: an entire section of the store dedicated to dry-pack food storage. Behind me in line, a pregnant young woman (with a toddler in the cart) was purchasing powdered margarine among assorted large cans of emergency food storage. “I’d been neglecting the prophet’s counsel for too long,” she said to me. “So I’ve become really focused on food storage.” I asked if the margarine powder was any good. “Well, it works OK if you cook with it.” No, thanks.

Maybe I’ve become “in the church but not of it.” I grew up in Mormonism, but the culture still seems foreign to me. I don’t know, but days like today remind me that I’m not in Texas anymore.